Getting the tone right

There are a few ways that local columnists could process the news that a new semi-pro hockey league is looking into placing a franchise in North Adams. You could weigh the possibilities and challenges the project would face, maybe trying to lean on the side of optimism for a prospect that would make our winters a little more fun. Or, you could just poop all over the idea and imply your readers are delusional losers.

The Eagle opted for a tried and true approach when Josh Colligan weighed in on the possible team, under the headline, “NAPHL in North Adams will fail.” No mincing words for this bold truth-teller:

“There’s a big difference between the greater Toronto and Montreal areas and Berkshire County: people. Those areas have them and this one doesn’t. The people that are here seem to have lost interest in hockey. That’s why this team, not the league, will fail.”

Well. I’m glad someone had the courage to point that out. Case closed.

This is a default mode of thought for a depressingly large number of print sports writers. The long tradition of taking up newsprint to tell their readers what suckers they are for caring so deeply about their teams and community. There are whole struggling newspaper out there that seem to bank on the hits this kind of trolling generates. The week after the AFC championship game, for example, the Boston Globe’s twitter feed was nothing but links to articles by Dan Shaughnessy et al. telling us how really bad the Patriots were and how just dumb we were for thinking they might have had a chance. Like the loud, angry kid in every classroom, many sports writers can’t tell the difference between good attention and bad attention.

I don’t have much patience for this nonsense, and luckily there are other ways to approach these stories. Andy McGeever in iBerkshires, for example, takes exception to Colligan’s column. He makes the reasonable conclusion that there is just no way to really tell how a hockey team would do here.

“The column suggests the No. 1 reason why the team will fail is because of population numbers. It cites that Pittsfield and South County as being too far away to supplement ticket sales. I question why that is so vital.

Pittsfield has a historic baseball field and in 10 years saw five teams start up — only to strike out. During that period, the North Adams SteepleCats have continued to outlast nearly every other team in the NECBL, becoming second to the longest tenured team in the league. They’ve outlasted cities with much larger populations. And they didn’t build their fan base over time as suggested — the fan base was there from the start.”

I’m glad McGeever came out so directly about this. There’s clearly no denying that this league will be a tough sell, but there are real decisions of tone and attitude that need to be made as you try to process and write about the idea. Colligan made a regrettable choice, especially for our county’s only remaining daily newspaper and what it represents so close to the merger (for the record, Colligan came over from the Transcript, so you can’t say it was just regional animosity. I hope).

It is endlessly amusing to psychoanalyze why sports writers do what they do. Especially at smaller newspaper, there are a lot of factors weighing on you. You don’t want to be labeled a homer, spreading feel-good, dumb boosterism. You have to tamp down your frustrations that you aren’t on ESPN yet as you cover another high school wrestling match. Hopefully somewhere along the road you learn good judgment, but that takes time and guidance.